Human Genome Project

One of the world’s most significant scientific undertakings, the Human Genome project sought to accomplish something that had never been done before: to map a complete set of human DNA.

It was an international effort carried out over thirteen years (from 1990 - 2003), and included contributions worth around $3 billion from scientists in six different countries. The goals of this ambitious endeavor were to sequence the entire human genome by determining the exact order of nitrogen bases that DNA is comprised of (known as A, C, T, and Gs) using a method called Sanger DNA sequencing.

Although the ways of determining the genome had been highly accurate, the sequence determined was not perfectly complete until recently: during the project’s completion in 2003, about 8% of the human genome had still remained elusive and was not able to be accurately determined. However, in 2022, a consortium of scientists announced that they had filled in all the remaining gaps, and produced the first truly complete human genome sequence.

Why, though, is DNA so important that it warranted a multi-billion dollar research project? Fundamentally, the order of the bases within DNA contains instructions to build an organism, or its genetic code. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, and includes all these bases that give it certain characteristics. This creates a complete set of instructions needed to create a human being.

This map identifies the way that different genes interact with each other, and which parts of the genome can affect certain diseases and medical conditions, giving doctors and scientists an extremely powerful way to counteract them.

As a result of the HGP, doctors have been able to customize patients’ medical treatments to fit their particular conditions by taking into account specific gene mutations. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, they can now personalize treatments and better target what is ailing a patient, making this a groundbreaking step in medical research.